


Songs To Never Hear Again Before You Die

by shinobi93



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catchy refrains, hummable melodies: songs you should never put on around Malcolm Tucker, unless you want your music player of choice smashed before your eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs To Never Hear Again Before You Die

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into writing TTOI, so I went for this ridiculous little thing. Dedicated to alichay, for getting me into/forcing me to watch the show.
> 
> Putting on each track may add to the experience, especially if you don't know the song.

**Sound Of The Underground - Girls Aloud**

In a battle of wills, Malcolm Tucker will come out on top, fuck you very much. It’s not a question of if but when: the inevitable caving after the practiced glare, the insults to truly ram home much of an incompetent little shit the other party is, regardless of their actual competency. He has enough will power to stop a tank, or to run Simon Foster over with one.

That is, unless said battle is against an entire popular fucking song.

The soulless pop ditty has been in the charts for long enough, long enough that every radio station thinks it their public duty to play the track five thousand times a day, so that Malcolm has heard snippets of the thing every-fucking-where he goes. He doesn’t give a shit what the ‘sound of the underground’ is, but he doubts it’s that song: monotonous roar of wheels on tracks, maybe; inane chatter; hurried footsteps echoed down tunnels; and diabolical announcers stating in monotones that not only would your train be delayed because some fucker had turned into a pigeon on the Circle line, but it would be the approximate temperature of hellfire and leave you feeling like a tramp had pissed all over you.

Then again, that song wouldn’t capture the British public’s hearts, or at least the impulse that made them buy the fucking song rather than simply turn on any radio station they’d care to try (he’s sure that even Radio 4 has snuck it onto their airtime once or twice, although he has never turned it on to check this theory). No, instead of something more accurate, he hears about water running in the wrong direction, whatever the fuck that means, over and over again until he wants to twist all their heads in the wrong direction, that godawful girl band that sing the monstrosity. War could be looming on the horizon, but no, the public are preoccupied with those girls who are apparently loud, or allowed, or something.

And if Malcolm hadn’t had enough of it before, before Washington and before pwip-pip, he has once he’s home, because every time he wants a moment of peace and quiet, a moment to deal with the consequences of having a decent hand in starting a war, he swears the song is always there: playing in the taxi back from the airport, playing in the cafe he buys a sandwich from, echoing out of someone’s fucking office once he’s back at work. On the latter occasion, Jamie gets there before him, and Malcolm listens to the blissful sound of his Senior Press Officer throwing the radio in question across the small room and threatening to shove its owner so far underground they’d never hear a sound again. Malcolm thanks him for it later, an offhand comment after a stationery cupboard blowjob, and Jamie grins momentarily in violent pride.

Later, after months and months and the song finally simmering down into a ‘oh, remember when that was famous’ kind of track, even the simple surf-style opening riff brings back memories of public anger and pointless Americans and that moment when he’d handed over that newly amended paper, put into a nice blue folder because it wasn’t a piece of late fucking homework, and sealed the deal.

 

-

 

**I’m Sitting On Top Of The World - Al Jolson**

Malcolm tries to avoid thinking about them, those who might be said to have got in close. If he does, however, he likes to think of them together, joined by a nice little 'and' perhaps, because he knows it would annoy each to be linked to the other. Jamie, and his ex-wife. Jamie first, because it’s fresher in his mind and because the universe doesn’t want to fucking let him forget about the man.

At first, it was the ceaseless questions, no one able to deal with a small change in the regime except fucking Sam, who had barely blinked when he’d muttered ‘Jamie’s gone’ quietly as he passed her desk, and said no more on the fucking subject. There was no more to say. He had become a liability. It was a good time for a departure.

(There was a wealth more to say, but Malcolm Tucker was not saying it.)

Then, it was the reminders, the fucking remnants of too many years in close proximity. A DVD in the back of the cupboard, scribbled down reminders on random scraps of paper, detritus that Malcolm throws out the second he sees it, but he’s not home often enough, doesn’t clean often enough, so it lingers. Jolson CDs appear like Jamie had been fucking breeding them; doubles some of them, Malcolm swears, as if it was some planned, inescapable onslaught of the entertainer. He throws them out, sometimes literally, and returns to worrying about whatever fuck up Nicola Murray has caused this time.

And then it is months later and he no longer finds the CDs or the scraps of handwriting or the occasional novelty socks. Nobody mentions Jamie, either. They didn’t much before, scared they might summon him like a Glaswegian devil, but it’s more conspicuous without the odd ‘not Jamie?’ uttered in fear.

Nicola does it again, says something unintentionally offensive to a group of young mothers this time, and Malcolm finds himself standing in her hallway, hand delivering the statement she will give to the press outside her home. Playing the family angle: stressed out mum, she’s just like you. Nicola Murray is nothing like them though, with a big fuck off telly that Malcolm can hear blaring through the wall, some combination of kids and husband probably gawking at the screen oblivious to the politics going on in the hall. Hissing threats through gritted teeth, he hears the familiar tune echo in his head and thinks it’s his imagination at first. Hearing Jolson at times of stress cannot be a good sign.

After an awkward pause, with Nicola staring because he’d stopped mid-insult, it occurs to him that it must be the TV - rather than his brain - that’s causing ‘I’m Sitting On Top Of The World’ to be sung at him. Jolson’s version, not anybody else’s, Malcolm is ashamed to know. Don’t want any-fucking-body else messing with the song, he recalls Jamie saying repeatedly, as if he could wipe the others from existence with his words. It is entirely possible, considering that the man also threatened to ‘smash into shards the CDs of, repeatedly stab with those shards, and then bury alive in a tomb of their own albums’ anybody who dared ruin Jolson for him. Malcolm never asked why Jamie cared so much. He knew: must be childhood. You don’t fuck with the childhood.

Malcolm moves on, feigns tiredness as an excuse (he’s been tired since nineteen ninety fucking seven, for christ’s sake), but the song is caught in his head, moved from that space he avoids, the depository for people no longer worthy of his time, to bouncing around his skull like Jamie himself is there, the cunt, yelling at Malcolm for being a soppy twat and also a heartless one. No way to win.

 

-

 

**I Fought The Law - The Clash**

The crowd has amassed quickly, because a second ago Malcolm could’ve sworn there was a small jumble of reporters and now there’s enough to form a few football teams, or enough that if he turned on them all, it’d be called a massacre. They splurge across the pavement, grey coats on grey, the state of modern journalism.

He was only in prison for a few months, nothing really, but that hasn’t stopped this interest in his release. The faces are jeering, or maybe that’s his imagination, because he likes to think they are. He hates them all, the smug fucking bastards, with so many skeletons in their collective closets that they could probably hold a national Halloween party without needing more decorations. Malcolm hates Halloween: fucking consumer holiday, with no more point than JB’s brain or Fatty’s salad bowl. These twats are worse though, desperate little journos with nothing better to do than loiter outside, tipped off by some cunt in the prison who wanted a few extra quid, or maybe the British press have become psychic during the time he was inside.

Not quite the reception committee he might’ve liked. Then again, it could’ve been worse: ex-colleagues looking pitiful, maybe, or Steve Fleming aiming a blow-dart tipped with fucking poison. Worst of all: Jamie, Jamie full of loathing or pity or even nonchalance, pretending it’s no big deal that he’s standing on that particular pavement on that particular day. Thank fuck it’s just these journalist cunts.

That thought lasts for all of five seconds, before some tall fucker with a face like he gets beaten with newspapers rather than writes for them starts singing.

_Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun_

Malcolm recognises it instantly, knows the plan of the man whose hopes of a continued career are about to go down the drain as he attracts the ire of Malcolm Tucker. The man who hasn’t got one millionth of the power of Joe fucking Strummer.

_I fought the law and the law won_

They didn’t fucking win, but Malcolm’s not stupid enough to yell that, not even after weeks and weeks of boredom and trying to seem like he’s plotting, scheming, not sitting dejectedly because there’s fuck all to do now. Malcolm did not lose, he made a tactical retreat.

_I fought the law and the law won_

**Author's Note:**

> Also, the thing on Nicola's TV is real, it's the 2005 King Kong film.


End file.
